Zuckerberg testifies, Spotify hardware, and Huawei P20 Pro review

After a week of Facebook-intensive news, The Vergecast is here to break it all down for you. Nilay is out this week, so Dieter and Paul welcome senior editor Natt Garun and Silicon Valley editor Casey Newton to the show to go over all the news. Even though Mark Zuckerberg took up most of the site this week, there was a still a lot of other stuff happening. Spotify may be releasing some hardware products, we reviewed the Huawei P20 Pro, and the cast gets into some classic talk about the web. There’s a whole lot more in between that — like Paul’s weekly segment “Record resolution revolution” — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 02:03 - Mark Zuckerberg testifies in front of Congress 33:17 - Spotify’s first hardware device might be this music player for your car 43:00 - Apple’s RED iPhone 8 43:37 - Huawei P20 Pro review 49:15 - Paul’s weekly segment “Record resolution revolution” 51:34 - Web apps are only getting better 52:52 - HP goes up against the iPad Pro with its $599 Chromebook x2 52:56 - This is the new Gmail design Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by IBM. Did you know that 16 million new collar jobs will be created by 2024? To help fill them, IBM's new education model gives high school students workplace experience and an associate's degree. 90 P-Tech schools are already preparing graduates for tomorrow's STEM careers. Let's put smart to work. Find out how at ibm.com/petech. That's P as in Paul, tech as in tech.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. Greetings, mobile accomplishers. This is a flagship podcast of theverge.com. I am Dieter Bone. Neelai is not here, and maybe if you're nice, we'll tell you why. I am joined by lovely people. Paul Miller is here.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Nat Garen is here.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  It's been a while.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Casey Newton is here.

• 0:52Speaker 03

  What up?

• 0:53Speaker 00

  We're gonna have the whole staff on because that's what we have to do when we don't have Neelai. No, no, Neelai's not here because Neelai is a father. He's on paternity leave.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  Yay.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  Go find him on Instagram at Reckless and like the picture of the baby.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Very cute baby.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Very cute baby. She is very cute. Her name is Max, Maxwell, Maxwell Saya.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  That's beautiful.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Max Maxwell Saya.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  No, just Maxwell, but Max for short. I suspect most people will call her Max. But yeah, she's a happy baby. Neelai seems to be a happy dad. I'm sure he's gonna be fine. He'll be fine.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Yes, I think, I mean, this will be a great thing for him.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  I think it's actually important, it's important for technology journalists to have children in their lives because it is the children that are going to tell them what is the next new important thing to focus on, right? Like you have children in your life to say, hey, I'm using the new Bing Bong app and everyone at my middle school is doing Bing Bong now.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, The Verge is fundamentally about the future and... I believe that children are the future.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  I think the best way to predict the future is to create it by having children. And that is exactly what Neil has done.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  All right, we have no more jokes. Casey, you've had a really chill week, right?

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Who doggies?

• 2:07Speaker 00

  It has been totally relaxing. You live blogged Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress for approximately 3,000 hours.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  It was 10 hours. It felt like 3,000 toward the end. There was a moment yesterday where my brain had never felt mushier. Like, I had sort of lapsed into this pure transcription mode where I felt incapable of sorting important questions from unimportant questions. And it actually, it made me respect Mark Zuckerberg in a new way because he did not have the luxury of his brain turning into mush. He had to be on point for 10 hours in a very high-pressure situation, so.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Okay, so, set the scene. So, day one was the Senate, day two was the House. He was going there to just answer questions from angry congresspeople, like, "What's the story?"

• 2:53Speaker 03

  That's basically right. If you've been reading The Verge over the past three weeks, you've probably seen our coverage of the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. And the gist of that scandal is that a researcher tricked a bunch of people into giving away their personal information, which he then sold to Cambridge Analytica, which then used it for a bunch of nefarious political ad targeting purposes. And although Facebook was aware of this, it apparently did not investigate to see whether Cambridge Analytica had deleted the data as they were supposed to. And so, a lot of people got very mad, and Congress called Zuckerberg to account for everything that had been going on. But, as often happens at these sort of hearings, while it started with Cambridge Analytica,

• 3:31Speaker 03

  it soon moved on to many other topics related to the seemingly never-ending cascade of scandals that Facebook has gotten wrapped up in since the 2016 election.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Favorite question.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  My favorite question that anyone asks?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Man, well, from the standpoint of social media and democracy, which is one of the things I care a lot about, I really appreciated that Lindsey Graham asked Zuckerberg straight up whether Facebook had gotten too powerful and whether it was a monopoly. He asked Zuckerberg to name his biggest competitor, and as we reported, Zuckerberg really couldn't name one. And that question is important because it forces, I think, all of us to reckon with the unchecked nature of power that not just Facebook have, but all of the big tech platforms have, whether you're talking about a Google, or an Amazon, or an Apple, right? The decisions that these companies make affect, you know, not just Americans, but billions of people

• 4:28Speaker 03

  around the world. And it seemed like the Senate and the House this week were belatedly waking up to that.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  I mean, I didn't watch all 10 hours because, oh my god. Also, disclosure, my wife works for Oculus, a division of Facebook, there you go. I expected to watch it and see a bunch of senators and congresspeople not understand technology, and I, my expectations were matched. I don't know. Was anybody generally impressed? There were like, maybe four things that I saw. I was like, yes, I'm, I'm impressed with the level of this question. You like, you picked a thing and you went and you did it. You asked the right question. But everybody else was like, well, I'm here.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Well, it seems like the whole thing is, I really don't like these kinds of, especially, it's not like it's a criminal investigation of something. Mark Zuckerberg is not part of the government, so they're not like investigating their own. So you end up with like this weird, like, a lot of people posturing and, I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't watch the whole thing, or hardly any of it. I relied on the excellent Verge coverage to summarize it for me. But I mean, a good, a large majority of it is just the congressperson like promoting, self-promotion.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of grandstanding and a lot of putting themselves over and hilariously, a lot of requests for favors from Mark Zuckerberg.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Really?

• 5:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, Axios did a great little piece about everything that lawmakers asked Zuckerberg for, and it was mostly, could you please bring fiber to my rural district? And that gave Zuckerberg an opportunity to say, well, you know, we're building an internet plane that can beam it straight to the ground. So, yeah, there was a lot of congresspeople grandstanding, but this is a case where it is helpful, and I'm finding it helpful, just a day later, after the hearings are over, to take a deep breath and really go through the transcript and really identify what was new that we learned from the hearings and what were the really sharp questions that got asked. And there is a set of questions that I would highlight in that regard that I think you

• 6:36Speaker 03

  are going to see drive the next wave of Facebook coverage. So you had two representatives, Joe Kennedy and I believe Ben Lujan, who asked about the data that Facebook collects about you that you did not give your explicit informed consent to. And as best as I can tell, there are at least three of these categories. So one is if you are not logged into Facebook, or you don't have an account, and you visit Facebook, any public page on Facebook on the web, Facebook tracks that. Hmm, okay. They say that's for security reasons because-

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Is that the shadow profile?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  It is part of a shadow profile, and what they say is if they did not track it, then you might be able to go in and scrape every public page on Facebook and do god knows what with it. So, okay, so that's the first category.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  So this is just like, oh, here's a visitor coming from this IP address, they've gone to this page, we're just going to keep an eye on this person, see if they're doing anything correct.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Make sure they're not a bot.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  For example. Two, ad purposes. So there's this thing called the Facebook pixel. It's a piece of code that advertisers can put on websites. All around the web to track your visits, whether you have a Facebook account or not. And then Facebook, which has an external advertising network can then use that information to target ads at you.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  No, this is just a standard, like, this is just a standard tracking pixel that like every ad network on the planet does, and Facebook just happens to be another ad network. Do you know if the tracking pixel happens with there's like a like button on a page?

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yes, it absolutely does. And my response to Facebook is just another ad network is, well, actually, Facebook is one of the two biggest ad networks in the entire world.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I was playing devil's advocate. Facebook is quote unquote, just another ad network in the same way that Google is quote unquote, just another ad network, right?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Sure, sure. So that's category two. And then category three, which actually got no airtime during the hearings, but which I think is important to point out, is data that it collects for growth reasons. So if any of your friends uploaded their contacts and your contact is in there, then Facebook has your phone number. And using these three kinds of data that I just described, they can build what Paul just referred to as a shadow profile. It is a bunch of information about you, you know, where you've been on Facebook, where you've been on the web, who your friends are, and they've built this, this really, you know, complete picture. Well, I shouldn't call it a complete picture, but let's say it's like a comprehensive picture of who you are. Now, why is all this important? Well, one of the major lines of questioning during the hearings was, okay, Mark, like, data privacy is really important.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  You need to give us control over our data. And Mark would say repeatedly, Senator, Congressman, you have control over your data. You can delete any of your data from Facebook, right? Except when it got to these categories. Now, of the three that I mentioned, it is true that if you have a Facebook account, you can opt out of web tracking, okay? Which just leaves the other two.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  But that still leaves these two categories of information that Facebook is collecting about you, whether you have a Facebook account or not, and you as a human being actually do not have control over that in a meaningful way. And so I think this is what is going to drive kind of that next wave of coverage is, Facebook says you can delete the data that, that, you know, you have volunteered to give it, but actually, Facebook is collecting a lot more information about you. And what I just described, there may be more categories of information that we're still waking up to.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  What about like, where do you like anti-tracking browsers and something like Brave or just an ad blocker? How does that fit into this picture?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  And is it, is anybody on the Facebook side suggesting like, whoa, you don't want to be tracked, set up some defenses, arm yourself?

• 10:08Speaker 03

  It's a really interesting question, and that may, in fact, be their response. I have a hard time imagining that them recommending that you use a browser or an ad blocker. I just can't imagine them doing it, but that may turn out to be an effective answer. But, you know, for so long, Facebook's prime directive has been to grow, and that has meant getting really creative about figuring out who people are. And, you know, it's worth mentioning, why are they doing all this? Well, the reason is, so let's say, you know, Paul, if you'd come back to the internet and immediately decided to create a Facebook account, which maybe you did, and I bring that up because Paul had a great piece on our site today about sort of advice for people who want to quit social media that I recommend everyone go read.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  But let's say you deleted your Facebook account or deactivated it, and when you came back, you'd create a brand-new one. Facebook would, just from your email address and your phone number, Facebook would actually already know who all your friends were. And they would say, hey, Paul, here's your 68 best friends. And, you know, you could go ahead and add all of them. And that's important because what Facebook has found is, the faster that it connects you to all your friends, the, they'll have you. Like, you'll spend more and more of your time there, you'll see more ads. It's a better business for Facebook if you're there with all your friends. And they would argue connecting you with your friends is what they're all about. So this is why they're, they're collecting all of this data. But as we saw with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, data has other uses, right? I'm really warming up to this metaphor about our public data as toxic waste, right?

• 11:32Speaker 03

  It's like, you know, it's like the byproduct of the thing we actually want to do, and over time, it just gets kind of more and more poisonous, and it's often many years after we gave it away that it comes back to haunt us. And by the way, let's just keep talking about Facebook.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, it's like, you know, like when your skin, you're constantly shedding little, you know, particles of your skin, and if you don't vacuum every now and then, your rug gets really crappy, and then you get allergies. You start sneezing.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  That is so gross.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  I don't know, I don't know, like, you're just leaving dead skin all over the internet.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  That, that is so gross. And the way, I feel like the way they collect the information too is super tricky. Like, if you just download Messenger, and you, like, you don't need a Facebook account to have Messenger, you just download it. And like, the first thing you'll say is like, would you like to upload your contact book? And you're like, sure, why not? Or if you sign up for Instagram, it's like, would you like to upload your contact book and find your friends? And you're like, sure, why not? And like, it's like this big blue button that you just click so that most people are just looking at their phone, and they're just like, next, next, next, I want to see pictures on Instagram. And they don't realize that the button they press is, yes, upload my entire contact list. And now all your friends are shadow profiles. As opposed to this very, very tiny text, it's like, no, don't do that. And people just skip it.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  And let's talk about how Facebook gets you to share those contacts. So if you do this through Instagram, for example, Owen Williams' Twitter personality tweeted the actual flow on the, on the Instagram mobile app the other day. And here's what happens. You enter your name and your password, and there's a little message that says, your contacts are periodically synced and stored on our servers. To remove contacts, go to Settings and Disconnect, Learn More. And then underneath that, there's a giant blue button that says Next. And then underneath that, in much smaller font, there's tiny blue text that says, Continue Without Syncing Contacts. Of course, you know, the vast majority of the people are just going to click the Next button, because what they don't realize is the Next button is the, yeah, go ahead, upload all of

• 13:27Speaker 03

  my friends' information button, right? It doesn't say that. So, you know, Facebook, on one hand, is talking a great game about giving you control over your private information, but there are all of these surfaces of the app that tell a different story, which is still growth at all costs.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Well, and the, correct me if I'm wrong, the, Facebook calling it Pixel, let's be clear how these ad trackers work. If they can't get your IP address, or they don't know who you are, ad tracking has gotten very sophisticated, and they put like, a little canvas object, and they use a profile of your computer, basically how your computer renders that little pixel, gives them information of who you are. They're not just like, they're not just taking the data when it's there, they're not just collecting the, the, the dead skin you've left behind, they're walking up to you and scraping it off.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  I mean, to be fair, I think television does this too, right? To TV programming, to just figure out like who's watching and if they're still watching a television programming.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Wait, how do they do that?

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Well, like on a TV where like if they flash a certain type of pixel.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Oh, TV manufacturers do this.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, like TV.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Like they show a pixel on TV during a certain programming, a certain time of day and whatever market you're in to figure out whether you're watching this particular programming.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Wait, and then your smart TV sees that and sends the information back?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  The TV does not have to be smart, like TV advertisers just can do that and figure out whether you're watching a certain programming based on whatever pixels are showing on your TV.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. Well, shut it all down. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Like, here's what I've learned about this week is that I think Congress and people in general just don't know how offline advertising even works, which is why this whole thing is so freaky to a lot of people because like this has existed for TV and this exists for offline for when like you sign up for a supermarket loyalty card and then randomly coupons show up to your house. Like, I think this type of like tracking and advertising has happened for a while and like now that's happening at a scale of Facebook, which you use nine hours a day, like people are freaked out.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Right. I would also say it's easy to buy a TV that isn't flashing these secret pixels at you and it's hard to not use Facebook, right?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Or it's at least harder.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, okay, extreme devil's advocate. Sure, let Facebook have my stuff. They provide a nice free service to me and I like talking to my friends and I like looking at pictures on Instagram and if them having a whole bunch of information about who I am and who I'm connected to socially is the price that I pay for that, I'd rather do that than five bucks a month, especially since it's the only option. What's the big deal? I mean, I know the answer, but I just want, I want to hear everybody say it.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  I think that is a fair question. The, the story that kicked all of this off was, well, the data that we give away, Facebook turns out not to have much control over. And one thing that we know happened is that a, a political consulting firm got ahold of it and tried to use it to create a highly targeted ad. And to persuade us more effectively because they learned things about us that we never would have voluntarily told them, right? Now, there have been plenty of reports that that that particular kind of targeting might not have been all of that useful in this case, but in an election where a lot of people

• 16:46Speaker 03

  were unhappy about the outcome and where the cause, or rather, the result had a lot of causes, I think people have kind of glommed onto this as wow, here is a concrete case where me giving away my data may have had some sort of impact on the world around me. So, you know, even if you think that that impact is overstated, I do think that it exists. And it just sort of opens up this door toward, well, my gosh, what are other people doing with my data? And the whole purpose of these hearings was to try to get a handle on that, saying, well, who else has this data and what are they doing with it? Because again, this gets down to the level of Facebook being able to know who you're married to, not because you've said, I'm married to this person on your Facebook profile,

• 17:31Speaker 03

  but because through location tracking, they know that you sleep in the same house. And this is real, and this is technology that they bragged about having during a presentation to advertisers last year. So that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Okay. So then the big question that had like Zuckerberg was like, ready for it? And then it came up in like lots of weird, different ways is like, okay, so we obviously have to regulate Facebook. But what does that even look like?

• 17:57Speaker 03

  So it could look like a lot of things, and I would be quick to add that I do not think that regulation is imminent because we live in a country that seems opposed to regulating big companies generally and particularly during this administration. So in a way, Facebook has a great opportunity to go out and regulate itself and try to avoid a true round of regulation, you know, if and when Democrats ever come back into power. But there are other things that could be done in the meantime. And you should read on The Verge a story written today by Russell Brandham about a concept that a Yale professor has called an information fiduciary, which sounds like kind of a ridiculous thing.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  But there are similar Similar positions in like the banking and finance industries where sort of as a requirement of being in an industry, you agree to follow certain standards and procedures. And it kind of becomes a good housekeeping seal of approval for for your company. And so he's arguing that Facebook, Google, Twitter, they would have an incentive to participate in a system where they agreed to abide by certain standards. And then this information fiduciary would essentially be able to audit their records and see whether they were living up to the promises that they made. And what's appealing about this, if you're a consumer, is that the companies could just

• 19:19Speaker 03

  sort of agree to do it and you wouldn't need to wait for a new Congress to come up with regulations.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  So, OK, let's assume that that's coming at some point. But the thing that was on the table right away was the GDPR. Russell's been on the show talking about it before, all these privacy regulations in Europe. And like, it seems like the answer to why don't you just make the GDPR rules available around the world and like to have that be the standard everywhere was like he gave different answers to it. It was also like, it was super funny for me to watch a bunch of, I don't know, senators and congresspeople who I think in any other context, if you had said, how about you take some European regulation and apply it to America, they would have been like, whoa, no, hell no. They're like, what about the GDPR there, Zuck? Like, Europe did the work of deciding what it wanted the standards to be when we in America didn't. And now we're just like, what if we just do that? And the answer seems to be, yes, well, no.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Well, kind of, well, we're doing this thing that's like it, but like, I don't, I don't get what their position is on that at all.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  They have given mixed messages. And frankly, I think some of the reporting about what Facebook has said has been inaccurate. There were reports that Facebook had said that it would not roll out GDPR protections globally. And then they came back and said, well, we didn't say that. And then finally, yesterday at the hearing, Zuckerberg said, Zuckerberg, rather, said, yes, we will roll out these protections and there will be some differences. And I'm willing to take Mark at his word when he says that they are going to roll out these protections and that there will be some. Essentially, minor differences between countries that are just rooted in the fact that we have different legal systems, and I'm sure there's going to be different wording. But the spirit of the thing is that you, as a citizen, should be able to request of

• 21:00Speaker 03

  any company a copy of the data that any other company has developed about you. I mean, that's really the spirit of it, and that does seem like something that Facebook can live up to. And in fact, they already have a download your information tool, which lets you download all the information that you voluntarily contributed to Facebook. Now, an interesting question would be, well, could you request your shadow profile? Right? And so these are some of the debates that I think you'll see playing out like over the next six months or a year.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Or request the reasoning that went behind why you're being shown an ad at any given moment would be really, really fun and a terrifying technical nightmare for them to implement.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  I love that idea. I love that idea.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Just real quick, Paul. I mean, so much of the fear and the outrage that tech platforms experience now is because they are racing to build these AI systems that can't explain themselves. And so you wind up with so much uncertainty around what's going on. I believe that one of the big reasons that there is this urban legend that persists that Facebook is spying on all of our phone conversations so that it can target ads at us is precisely because we don't have the button that you just mentioned, Paul, that you can't just hit something that's like, hey, why are you showing me an ad to visit Copenhagen? Because like I was just talking about that with my friends.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, but there's no way that they could provide that button. You just said that they don't know what the AI is doing. You click the button, and the button would pop up the same dialogue box every time, and it would say, yeah, we don't know, the computer thought it might be good.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Or it could say, you know what? This advertiser wanted to reach men between the ages of 30 and 40 who lived in the United States. Ads actually are a case where the AI could explain itself at least a little bit.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  So I've been reading a really wonderful book about machine learning called The Master Algorithm. I saw this guy, this guy gave a bunch of like TED Talks and stuff when his book came out, and he's a machine learning researcher. He's kind of a machine learning utopian.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Talks a lot about how they just need more and more data. But there's, there's, there's a clear separation of concerns and I really like this fiduciary idea, but I, in this book, he, he presents an, an option where you have something that's kind of like a bank for your data. So all data about you goes to your, your bank. It's the, the, I don't know, whatever, what do you want to call it? The Wells Fargo of personal information, right?

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Wells Fargo as a bank with money, if you think about it, it's their job to hold on to your money, to give it back to you if you want it. And to give it to other people when you say it's okay.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  So I, I've just been thinking about, there's got to be some ways to separate the collection of data from the usage, because ultimately we want Facebook to be able to use their data. And I definitely, I'm excited about a lot of these applications of machine learning, where if some company had not just the profile that they can build on me by tracking me obsessively, but by combining that with the profile that Netflix can build and that Amazon can build, they can get a much larger picture of, of who I am, right?

• 24:20Speaker 00

  So what you're saying is data has, we all agree in the abstract, has some sort of value and therefore can be used to trade with each other, but there needs to be ways to track it. And also maybe we should make, consider making it like that abstraction concrete in some way. And so we need an institution that stores that value. And when then we need maybe little, I don't know, slips of paper that are like, you know, created by a, a large institution that, that, you know, is willing to back them up if necessary.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  I feel like you're.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Or maybe, or maybe, or maybe this, this abstract concept of our data that has value there, it should actually be tracked in a really big way, such that like we know that these transactions actually occurred. It could be maybe like a, a really large public ledger, ledger that gets verified by the actions of, you know, computer GPUs that do math problems. Paul just invented the blockchain. Paul just invented the blockchain.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  For the record, on Facebook, you actually, there is actually a button that says, why am I seeing this ad? But it doesn't really tell you that much. It just says like. You saw an ad for The Verge because you are between a certain age and you like reading, or like something super vague like that, so it's about just figuring out how to be way more transparent and specific.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  That's a good point, yeah. Thanks for bringing that up, that's true.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  Is literally anything gonna happen?

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Yes, literally something is gonna happen, and here's how you know, because over the past three weeks, things have been happening. Facebook totally locked down its API, so a bunch of information that it used to share, it no longer does. They did a steady drip, drip, drip of announcements in the days leading up to the hearing, precisely so they could turn around and say, "Just look at everything we've been doing since this happened," right? And I fully believe that that's gonna continue because the scrutiny is not going away.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, that's a happy note?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  I like the fiduciary. Imagine a world where Facebook has agreed to this industry standard, and just like that green SSL lock, when you're on a site that is agreeing to this standard, you get a little icon, like the Terms of Service have that icon, like, "Oh, I know what that icon means." And then if they don't, that industry group outs them for not following those agreed-upon rules. I think that could definitely help us, because we're not all gonna read the Terms and Conditions. And I feel like part of the EU solution is, okay, just get them to agree to everything upfront so that we have the flexibility down the line.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  Is this like a CPA? Is this like a lawyer? Is this like an actuary? Is it all of the above? I'm just, I'm trying to imagine the college program.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  It's like a standards body. You know, I read Russell's story. I'm not an expert on the proposal, but you know, it doesn't seem to me to be all of that different from almost like a bar association, but at the company level, right? Where it's like, you know, when you become a lawyer, you agree to uphold certain standards, and if you do not, you can be disbarred. And I think, you know, there would be similar mechanisms with this kind of, you know, information fiduciary.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Also, they need a better name. It just sounds ridiculous. And in fact, there was a name that got pitched during the hearing by one of the representatives yesterday, which I think was something like, you know, a data privacy czar. A czar who loves czars. Essentially, like that there should be, much as there is a Consumer Financial Protection Board, there should be a Consumer Data Protection Board. Which I also really like as an idea.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Could we talk briefly about how almost half of the answers for how Zuckerberg answered all the congresspeople was like, "We rely on AI," or like, "We're building an AI," or like, "AI will solve the problem." That seems very... what?

• 28:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, AI is a magic talisman, and whenever you're threatened in congress or elsewhere, you just wave it in front of the face of whoever's talking to you, and you say, "Oh, no, no, no, the AI will fix the problem." And for some reason, we've just agreed to nod and accept that answer. I think that's appropriate. That's fair.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  I mean, it's kind of crazy to me because like, the first, one of the first reasons like AI was brought up was when Ted Cruz was like, "Well, why is like, Facebook seems to be anti-conservative, and there's a bias, and like, blah, blah." And like, these pages are being blocked, and Zuckerberg is like, "Well, like, in the future, like, AI is going to figure out what's inappropriate, and we're going to take that down," and, you know, all these other people harped on like, inappropriate content on Facebook. But like, isn't AI, like, algorithms inherently are biased? Like, you're supposed to teach it what to get preference to, so like, how is this going to fix a problem? I don't like, I don't really understand what like, this whole AI narrative is going.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  It's a great point, because automated systems are the reason that many of these pages or posts are being withheld or temporarily suspended in the first place. Like, some keyword triggers a review, and the thing gets withheld, right? So it's like, AI is at the root of this problem already, and even Zuckerberg has agreed that training a machine learning system to understand speech well enough to be able to draw ...these incredibly hard distinctions between what is political speech and what is hate speech like that's a that's that's very hard I mean that's that is not going to be up and running and working really well within the next five years or maybe even 10 years right

• 29:44Speaker 03

  so you know that said no one was more disingenuous over the past two days than Ted Cruz That's like an evergreen statement. Evergreen statement pinned tweet whatever you want to call it.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  I supported Ted Cruz over Donald Trump in the primary I just like like the have that on the record.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  No, no, you deserve praise for that, I suppose. Of a kind. Yeah. You know, the important thing that I think to remember is that there is no systematic bias against conservative news on Facebook. If you are a conservative person, you can choose to like only conservative pages and befriend only conservative people and they will feed you a steady diet of conservative everything for the rest of your life and Facebook is happy to do it. And if you look at which pages get the most engagement out of any on Facebook clustered near the top are a bunch of conservative sites. So we have seen no evidence that conservatives are at any disadvantage to any other ideology on Facebook and in fact, they may have an advantage because and we saw that during

• 30:50Speaker 03

  the 2016 election where it was some of these sort of conservative leaning viral hoaxes such as the Pope endorses Donald Trump that got more shares than almost anything else.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  I just wanted to to point out something about machine learning and AI that I learned from this excellent book called The Master Algorithm that I really want everybody to read. But one of the things that the book points out is that an AI algorithm is literally 100% mathematically provably ineffectual without bias like the content of an AI is the bias that it has learned on training data.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  So, so we have the word bias as a pejorative in the sense that you lean one way or the other. But the whole content of a machine learning algorithm is the bias that it has learned from how it's been trained. And so therefore, we, we're definitely not going to solve bias by magical AI, because all we're doing when we're building AI is feeding it bias. And we're hopefully choosing what appropriate, what's the right bias.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Well, I'm going to read an ad now, and this is, um, this is, this is quite the ad for this moment. Did you know that by 2050, the world population will reach nearly 10 billion and food production will need to grow by, guess what, how much, Paul, guess how much it's going to need to grow by? 70%. That's how much. What if artificial intelligence could help? Farmers are already using it to help increase crop yields. Watson and the IBM Cloud provide access to weather data and analyze satellite imagery to help them monitor soil moisture levels and reduce water waste. So as the population grows, more food can be put on tables. Let's put smart to work. Find out more at ibm.com/smart.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Can I just say, I heard the word data so often over the past couple of days, and after a certain point, I just started to hear dada, like how babies refer to their fathers. And so just like hearing, yeah, so just like hearing a bunch of senators saying, now, tell me about your dada. I was like, what is, what is happening here?

• 33:11Speaker 00

  I can't, I can't segue off of that.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Nat?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  On April 24th, Spotify said it's going to make a quote, "news announcement." Everyone didn't know what the heck that meant. But we saw a thing that maybe is the thing. Can you, what is the thing?

• 33:31Speaker 02

  So there's several things. We don't know what Spotify can announce. They just IPO'd, and so that means that they could radically change the service itself. But what we did find is there is a leak of a hardware device that's basically this like... Thing that you attach to, I guess, your air vent in the car. And you can use it to ask it to play any random Spotify music. So think of it as like a digital assistant, but all it does is play Spotify stuff. We don't really know anything about it, other than that it's just supposed to be this thing that attaches in your car. And like the leak that we saw may not even be what it'll actually look like. What we saw is like this like circle.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  It looks kind of like a button or a pin that you just kind of clip on, kind of like how you would clip on a phone holder in your car. And it has a little screen on it that says what you're listening to. There's a pause, there's a shuffle, there's a rewind button, and that's basically it. And then like a little talking bubble that says, hey Spotify, play my Discover Weekly. And that's all we know. We have no idea whether it has third-party integrations, anything else. We just know that it can play Spotify if you talk to it.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  I mean, that's a lot. We know a lot. I mean, assuming this thing exists, it's got a display, so it's like, there's actually a display. It has voice input in some way. It's got controls. It probably, I mean, it'll connect to either other, either aux or probably Bluetooth. And then the, the thing was that it was maybe going to be part of a subscription. So like you just like, you, you pay like 13 bucks a month as one of the screenshots that we saw.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  And that includes the data plan?

• 35:04Speaker 02

  That should include the service, like Spotify Premium, because that would be crazy for them to sell that with ads.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Who wants to go on a marvelous journey with me? Imagine if there's one mount for your car vent and another mount that you could put on like an arm strap, and you can take this running with you. Ooh. Wouldn't that be great? A, a, a device that can play your Spotify without having you to sync, having to sync anything, without having to carry your phone.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Isn't that just sort of

• 35:39Speaker 03

  I think, I think anything that, anything that is like, that Spotify makes that is wearable, they should call Bodify. It's like B O D I F Y.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  I mean, I would buy the hell out of this thing.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  A Bodify?

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would buy a Bodify, for sure. I have a car. I drive it, I don't know, once a week, once every couple of weeks these days. I have Android Auto, Nat and I were just talking about this. And so I have Android Auto, which has Spotify on it, and I would still consider buying this thing. Because Android Auto is hot garbage for me right now.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Android Auto works fine for me. I like it just fine. I mean, like, how, how much are you asking of your Android Auto? All I'm using it for is just directions and like, hey, play this random song.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  It's slow, it disconnects, it like, you can't, you can only tap the screen, I think, four times or five times before the whole thing freezes and tells you that it's unsafe for you to be doing what you're doing. You gotta like, pull over to find your playlist on Spotify.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Very oddly, that, very oddly, that is not happening for me, so, but I can sympathize that it's still relatively new software, because it's like, you know, only new cars still have them. But like, if the Spotify thing, that's hardware with no name, has third-party integration, that has like, any kind of map integration, that's basically just like Android Auto, but like a Google Home that you stick to your car, that's, I can see that being worthwhile.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Okay, so if you could speak to it, you say, hey Spotify, you don't say, Alexa, tell Spotify, you don't say, hey, Google, like, they're building their own voice assistant now, too?

• 37:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, we know that they are, because it's actually already live in the iOS app.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Does not work well when you're on the street, is a lesson I learned recently. If you're alone, in a quiet room, works fantastic, but, uh, man, I tried to get it to play something when I was walking around town the other day, and it was just not happening for me.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  So you have, you have to open the app, and then like?

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Then if you go to, there's a search feature in the app, and if you, when you tap that, there is a microphone button, you tap microphone, and then, uh, you just say what you want. It's a great idea. I mean, like, the thing that I'm most excited about is just that Spotify is making hardware, period. Because right now, in order to have a great Spotify experience that is not on your phone, you have to Somebody else's hardware, right? Like you have to plug it into your Sonos speakers. You have to connect it to your Alexa device. I, all I want is like a Spotify version of the HomePod, basically, except that I want it to come in multiple flavors and sizes.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  So I can have maybe one big one and a few little ones, but like I still want the ultimate Spotify hardware. And having spent four months now with the Sonos one, like I know it's not the Sonos one.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  And I also feel like Spotify can just be smarter about if they work on it. Like when you're talking to Spotify, like right now, if I say Alexa, play Angel Olsen on Spotify. Half the time Alexa will play a Spotify radio station with Angel Olsen. But the other half of the time Alexa will just find some random thing that kind of sounds like, like the words Angel Olsen. And it could be literally all music in the world where Spotify knows that all I ever do is listen to Angel Olsen. Spotify should have a pretty good idea of who I'm trying to listen to and can just send me right there.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, if anything, I, my feeling about Spotify is like, I almost wish that it would be a little bit more creative in what it suggest. Like it's kind of like, you know how if you like, you buy a toilet on Amazon and then for the next like eight months, it tries to sell you an additional toilet? Like I sort of feel that way about Spotify where it's like, oh, you listened to this song twice yesterday. Maybe we'll make that the lead song on your mix. It's like, no, like play, just play me another song by that artist.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is a classic problem, machine learning that is thankfully addressed by the master.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Do you have a promo code for that, Paul?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  It's called, uh, buy it on Audible, maybe.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  A long promo code.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Speaking of promo codes, the promo code is promo code and the, the power user of the internet shirts are in the Verge store right now.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  I have ordered mine and it's yet, I don't know what the turnaround is on those.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  I've also ordered mine. I ordered the basic one, the one that is actually like not like weird looking enough.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Not ironic.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  That was the wrong move. I ordered the like, I, we, so, okay. So if you're not familiar with the story, Mark Zuckerberg during a Q and A with reporters that I was on last week, referred to himself as a power user of the internet, uh, which is obviously true, but like just sort of like funny because of the understatement. And so immediately within the Verge, we said, we have to make this a T-shirt. And so we whipped up these four designs and put them to a vote on Twitter and the most like. Boring, um.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Version one. It's a good. It looks good. You're right. Let me take it back. A very talented artist made it. It doesn't look bad at all. It just looks like, um, serious to me. And what I loved about the version of the shirt that I bought is that it looks like a 90s VHS cassette, um, about the internet, like just those like over the top computer graphics, like neon colors. Uh, and so that's what I wanted, so I bought it.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  But Dieter, you don't know when it's gonna come.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  It's soon. I've got my tracking pixel.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Great.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Anyway, um, the hardware thing is not the only thing that Spotify could be doing. There was a report earlier this week saying that they could be making changes to their free service. So hopefully, um, to me, if anything, uh, they should use the music I listen to and serve me actually better ads since I'm cheap and I won't pay for it. And I'm okay with listening to an ad for like a minute for, you know, I don't know. It's not a big deal to me. Anyway.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  We need to, we need to back up. How did you decide not to get Spotify? Do you pay for any music at all?

• 41:23Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Any music service? Wow.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  I'm super cheap. I listen to music on Spotify for free or on YouTube because like, I don't care. It's fine. Advertising is a thing that I can ignore for half a minute and then move on to my life, my current life. It's fine. But I have to admit that Spotify probably has the worst ads. Like they could probably learn from Google and Facebook and how to target ads better because I keep getting either the same ads or just ones that completely are irrelevant. Like I'll listen to a Roxanne and get an ad for a concert for like Aaron Carter. And it just makes no sense. They just don't understand it. And like, if anything, if they could do, if they're planning to revamp the free subscription tier. Better ads would be my request.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Wow, I I'm just shocked. I I pay for every single music service. It's embarrassing. I don't pay for title. I don't pay for title.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  I don't. I have paid for every music service and I have whittled them down to Spotify and to Google Play Music, which I frankly mostly pay for because I get YouTube Red, which is the the most underappreciated streaming service that there is.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  Do you pay for YouTube Red now?

• 42:34Speaker 02

  I I had it for like, we like, we bought a Google Home and it gave us like a free thing. And after that, I was just like, meh.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  What about Netflix?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  I don't pay for Netflix. I don't use Netflix.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  This is amazing.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  I don't use Netflix. I don't have Hulu. I pay. I have Sling. That I have.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Sling?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  That's because I I don't have cable TV, so that's what I have.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Right. Interesting.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Very frugal, y'all.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Jealous. What else we got? Phones. It's red iPhone 8. It is so red. It is way redder than I expected. I have nothing else to say about it other than it's super red.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  It is way better than the last red iPhone they made, which is that the front is actually black versus the last one where the front was white and we were like, what the hell were they thinking? So, yeah, and this is clearly a play on getting more, you know, of their Asian markets to buy it because red is a lucky color and people love red and people like to be unique. And, yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Also, like, charity, right?

• 43:29Speaker 02

  I mean, there is that, but like, Apple.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  You know how Apple loves charity?

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then Vlad reviewed the Huawei P20 Pro. I don't have one yet. I'm expecting, hopefully, to get one next week.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Aren't they illegal in this country?

• 43:45Speaker 00

  They are.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Not like technically, but kind of.

• 43:49Speaker 03

  So, I wouldn't want to be caught with one coming across the border. I'd say that much.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  The big question is... Is the burden of proof on Huawei or the US government at this point? Because the US government has said, "No, no, no." And everyone's sort of like, "Well, tell us why." And they're like, "We're not gonna..." There were studies years ago, people looking into it. Huawei's networking equipment is used around the world. They're like a leader in 5G tech. And there's a concern, is it really about spying? Or is it about a concern that this privately-held, or quasi-privately-held Chinese company that has connections to the Chinese government, the Chinese military frankly, is to be trusted either for security or simply because if we let them have too much power defining 5G, they're gonna end up being a monopoly in 5G networking equipment.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  And Ericsson and Nortel and whoever else will just fade away.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  I really want this to be clarified for me. Because like here, Paul Miller-

• 44:47Speaker 00

  But by whom? Like, do you think it's up to Huawei to convince the US government? Or do you think it's the US government to like, tell us what the problem is?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  I think the US government... Here's the thing. If I, Paul Miller, say, "Don't buy Huawei phones. They spy on you, or they are a security risk." If I cannot prove that, that is libel. And so for the government to say that and insinuate that without saying actually why, it feels like libel to me. And like, maybe if it's true, and then therefore Huawei can't actually fight it because it's actually true, then that's one thing. But it's just so weird. Also, I liked Vlad's usage of the term "super-flagship",

• 45:35Speaker 01

  which I think really nicely encapsulates this new tier that we have of like the sort of the $1,000 phone that is for rich people.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's about right. It also has a notch, which I'm done having feelings about notches. I just can't. I don't have the emotional energy to be angry or sad about notches anymore.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Here's why. Because so, you know, one thing about me is I'm not a hardware person. And I felt that very acutely as this debate was raging about the notch. And I got my iPhone. I was like, "Oh, I kind of think this notch looks cool." And I was like, "Well, I'm not telling any of my coworkers about that. I'm keeping that to myself." But I've like, I've never had one negative emotion about the notch the entire time I've had my iPhone X.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Wow. I mean, I have had it in landscape annoy me sometimes, but that's about it. It's fine. It's whatever.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  I'd like, here's the thing. Every time I consciously am aware of it, I think you're the thing that's like shooting lasers at my face that lets me log into this phone. Like, so I have this very positive association with it, which is like, you enable a cool thing.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Well, all it enables on Android phones is like a screen that's 8% bigger. Cause like their, their cameras and the other stuff that they put inside the notch aren't really that interesting. They're as interesting as what's on the iPhone. So it's like, sure, it's 8% bigger. I don't care.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Not as interesting as the iPhone. Welcome to Android.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  I'll have more feelings about this next week when I actually use it. I don't know. It's, it's very pretty. The camera's fascinating. I'm gonna get a review unit and then we'll see, and then we'll see what happens, you know, having a Huawei phone walking around the streets in America if I get tackled by NSA agent.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Imagine if your technology is spying on you somehow. Can you, could you believe it?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  They're gonna know what you like and what you're enthusiastic about and who you're married to.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know, like this, this company's getting checked out by every intelligence service on the planet, right? Like if MI6 isn't freaking out and MI5 isn't freaking out and keeping these phones.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  MI4, MI3.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  I'm just saying. I don't know. It's very confusing. And so I'm assuming it's like a, it's a trade thing. We're afraid of their trade power. We're afraid of their like owning the 5G standard, but like compared to Qualcomm, I guess, compared to, I don't know. Like who cares what Ericsson, I don't know. Anyway, it's, it's very confusing. I'm very excited to try it. I am, I'm not on board with calling anything a super anything.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Except for, except for a hotel that's a super eight that I'm okay with.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  Would you be comfortable calling Jessica Jones a superhero?

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Ooh, I would.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  I am trying to watch season two right now and man, it is just, it is a slog.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  It is a bit of a slog. The first season of Jessica Jones is maybe my favorite Netflix anything ever. And so, season two, I came in with a lot of high hopes about. It, it does some cool things, but it's not as good.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  It's just, all they do is punish her and make her sad. And it's really getting to be like, let her have a good, nice day. There should just be an episode of Jessica Jones in the middle of season two, where she just goes and gets some ice cream. That should just be the whole episode.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Without spending half an hour on this, the one thing that I will say that I think is actually the key to the season, is that both this season and last season are about the kinds of control that men have over women's bodies. And it is the fact that she is constantly oppressed and so are the women in her life that is the actual thematic point of the show. And I think it's worth sitting with.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  I agree. Okay, fine.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Well, dear, if you're interested in watching Superwomen, have a great day. I suggest Instagram stories. That's basically it. A lot of really, Superwoman just having a great day, buying ice cream.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Okay, fair.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  And you don't have to pay for that.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Paul.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Every week.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:20Speaker 03

  You go get some ice cream.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  And then you think about, think about doing a segment.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  One out of seven.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  While you're eating your ice cream, every week. It's always the same.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Of the week.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  I don't know what's happening. Neil, I come back. We're not, we're not.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  It's called Record Resolution. So there is a.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  You really missed a chance for a revolution joke there.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  What was that?

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Cause records revolve. It could have been a record resolution revolution.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Oh shoot. You're right. Let's do it over. Let's do it over. You know what? This week, I'm changing the name. It's called Record Resolution Revolution. So some company is making HD records. They call it high definition vinyl.

• 50:08Speaker 03

  What does that even mean?

• 50:10Speaker 01

  It means that we have the technology to, basically, if you think of it like, almost like 3D print, or make a 3D imagination of a record. And therefore, it means that you can have a louder volume, you can get longer playtime, you can get like a more resolution in the audio. So they're, they're working on a process to, they create a, the, the audio is first digitally converted to a 3D topographic map. Then lasers engrave the map onto a stamper, which makes an impression in the vinyl.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  So it's just, it's just a like, a higher resolution, higher fidelity, like peaks and valleys in the, the thing that the, the needle reads.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Right. And this is in comparison to like a traditional record, like at least in the olden days, how it was made, is it's literally like, it's like playing a record in reverse. You have a needle-

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, Thomas Edison yells into a cone and there's a needle at the end of it and it-

• 51:12Speaker 01

  And that vibrates and creates indentations in the wax or whatever. I don't know. So anyways, better records, very exciting.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  Is it?

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  What do you want from me, Titor?

• 51:25Speaker 00

  I'm sorry.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Neill always, Neill always loves my segments.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  Ah, it's a good segment. I just, I saw CDs were making a comeback again. I don't know. It's very confusing. All right. I want to talk about the web a little bit, which is of course, because Neill is gone. We were going to talk about the web. Paul, you just wrote a really nice article about what's going to happen with web apps, maybe?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  You want to chat about that briefly?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I pointed out, there's a bunch of interesting things and I didn't cover every hot new technology, but three of them that I pointed out were progressive web apps, which iOS 11.3 silently included support for progressive web apps. I think it's, they were silent about it because Apple has not really fully embraced the standard. But they are starting to embrace the standard. And it, it's a lot to explain what a progressive web app is, but the, kind of the vision is that you can go to a website and then you add it to your home screen and now it basically behaves like an app. But it works really well on Android. It works really badly on iOS.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  The progressive part is it progressively loads the rest of the web app in the background when you visit the page the first time. So it progressively becomes a full app.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  And all, uh, and also it progressive, it can, it can be progressively enhanced.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  It's also part of the progressive. I don't know.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  It's very progressive.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  It's very progressive.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  There's a person wearing a, wearing an apron. Her name is Flo. She delivers the app to you in a box. The other web thing that happened is we finally have another Chrome OS tablet, the HP Chromebook X2. I don't know.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  This is a tablet in the sense that a Surface is a tablet.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you can, you can use it without the keyboard and it looks like the keyboard actually bends in like a laptop-y kind of way. I'm really curious to see how that hinge works. I'm also really curious to see when Google's gonna get around to making tablet mode on Chrome OS not crap. Because I use it on a Pixelbook all the time and it's still pretty bad. Everything goes to fullscreen and there's no way to really deal with that.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  I, we live in this marvelous time where Apple has created a beautiful mobile OS and Google has created a wonderful web browser and you can't get them both on the same device.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Yup.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  I just want to take a Pixelbook and I want to take my iPad. I just want to sit on them and then get both at once.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  Okay, last, last piece of news, unless we want to do a little lightning round, I think is all these leaks. Tom Warren got some, some other sites got some of the, the new version of Gmail redesign that's coming. Speaking of web apps, I am excited. I tried using Inbox for a long time and gave up. And so for Gmail to finally get proper real snoozing is actually really exciting for me.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're also building in Smart replies, which I think is really funny because they're really going all in on the Smart reply thing and.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  I'm just really into this calendar pane.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Like, they are basically doing iOS multitasking in Gmail, where you have a second app where you have your notes or calendar or whatever on the sidebar.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  It makes sense. I mean, when I go through my inbox, which I now do approximately once per week,

• 54:48Speaker 03

  I would say like a third of the items that actually require my attention, the reason I haven't given them attention yet is I need to move some information from the email into the calendar. And so there's a world in which like the calendar and the inbox should be the same thing. And it's just about like moving inbox items onto your calendar. So I'm shocked it's taken Gmail this long to try this.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  And like, I'm still kind of like sorting through these screenshots. I can't tell exactly how it's gonna work, but it's well worth the shot.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  I think it's not gonna be what you're hoping for. I'm sorry.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  Well, nothing ever is, Peter.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  I love that hangouts is still here, like.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's really takes me back.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. How else is your mom supposed to contact you while you're at work?

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Wait, your mom contacts you through hangouts?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  She used to. That used to be her like go-to method.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Clearly, it's a tweet, Casey, because they'll like everything.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  One of my favorite things about my own mom is during the AOL Instant Messenger days, she would write a message to me and then sign each message, Mom.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Like, she would sign individual chat messages.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  That's sweet. My mom instead doesn't type in English, so she communicates with me using Facebook Messenger stickers. So to ask me whether I've had lunch, she'll send me a sticker of like a takeout box.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  To ask me whether I'm coming home for the weekend, she'll send a person looking sad.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Do you reply?

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Do you reply in English or do you reply with stickers?

• 56:18Speaker 02

  I reply with words and she will reply back with about approximately five more stickers. It's great. I love her.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  This is very efficient.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  I hope that in addition to adding snoozing functionality to Gmail, that they put out an open source spec for email that includes the idea of snoozing that iterates on IMAP such that if you want to use a third-party email client that also has snoozing, you don't have stupid-ass snooze folders in your Gmail all the time. That there's just like, the idea of snoozing should just be built into the email spec and everyone should just adopt it. And if Google just like said, "All right, here it is and here's how apps can interact with it, and then everybody else can use it too, it's fine and it's free", then we could just, we could all pick any app that we want to interact with their service and it would be great. That's what I want.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  If only the email spec was easier to consistently implement across clients.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  What are you talking about? It's super easy to implement. It's IMAP. It's like, there's a million email clients. I mean, it's super hard to make an email client successful.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  How many, how many IMAP clients do you know of? Name, name me more than four.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  Are you kidding?

• 57:24Speaker 03

  Like, Microsoft Outlook.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Outlook's, I mean Sparrow's, I mean, they're all gone now. They're all dead now. But a company like all, every email app on the planet uses IMAP. Oh, okay. But it's not, they weren't dead because IMAP was complicated. They're dead because they couldn't make any money, because they all got bought by these other companies.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  Which I think like speaks to though, like what strategic incentive does Google have to improve functionality in third-party apps that it makes no money from?

• 57:48Speaker 00

  Because they're just not evil, Casey. Maybe they are. Whatever. Sorry, Paul, what were you gonna say?

• 57:54Speaker 01

  I was just gonna, we missed this last week, but Intel released Core i9 processors for laptops. Like, these are H-series processors. This is like a huge speed bump. They're saying 29% overall speed boost, 41% improvement for gaming. This is basically the best time ever in your life to buy a 15-inch, like, high-performance laptop. You can get a performative machine with a GPU in a portable form factor, like with like, like 4 GHz processor. That's turbo boost. It's not always running at 4 GHz.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  But it's just an exciting time to love a very specific kind of laptop.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a really great last hurrah for Intel chips.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  Apple switched into their own chips in a couple of years. Windows is running on ARM now, too. Like, no one wants to stick, no one wants to hang with Intel. Nobody enjoys buying Intel products anymore.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  I love buying Intel products. I have one of, each one of their products.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you ever go over to Casey's house, he's got like a wall framed.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  He has a T-shirt that says, "Power user of Intel products."

• 59:14Speaker 03

  I am a power user of Intel products. I care so much.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Intel's last hurrah is their AMD partnership. Once we see some of those products, like, as like laptops, like with built-in GPUs, you'll have like a new size of laptop that can have a tolerable GPU. And that will be fun until ARM takes over the whole world.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. That, I think, is the end of the Vergecast. I want to thank Casey for coming on.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  It was wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  I want to thank Nat for coming on.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Glad to be here.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  I want to thank Paul for being here. Thanks for having me, Dieter. Yeah. You can follow us all on Twitter. I'm @BacklineCasey, is Casey Newton, Nat is Nat underscore Garrett, Nat Garrett.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Just Nat Garrett, two Ts.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Paul's future Paul. We are @verge on Twitter. We're also @verge on Instagram. You should also listen to other podcasts. I highly recommend season two of Why'd You Push That Button? The last episode that I listened to was about restaurant reviews, and I quite enjoyed it. There's also a podcast from Recode. There's Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. She's got the full interview of her MSNBC interview with Tim Cook recently, which is really good. There's also Recode Media with Peter Kafka. And you should go to Apple Podcasts and rate and review us, because that's helpful. And we need your help, because Neel is not here, and this ship is going down real fast if we don't figure it out. So give us, give us a good review. I'd appreciate that.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  And we should also mention that our good friend Dieter has a new show on YouTube called Processor.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  It exists.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  And I watched the first episode, and it was fantastic. Dieter, what would you tell our audience about Processor?

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  I would tell you that we're going to try and air them on Wednesdays, although... This coming week, I think we're gonna have a bonus episode, which I'm pretty excited about. And I'm trying to talk about tech, but also add a little, I don't know, human empathy and kindness to it, which isn't always like obvious. I'm not gonna like end every episode by saying be nice to each other. This isn't like Mr. Rogers does gadgets. But I don't know, I'm just trying to like do a little like actual like thinking and analysis about tech instead of just hands-ons. Eventually, it will devolve into just hands-ons, but until that happens, when I run out of ideas, there's gonna be some really cool stuff, I hope.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  And the first episode is really good. Well, I will just wanted to say the first episode was very thoughtful. That's all I wanted to say.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  This is all too much attention. Rock and roll.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Wait, what did Casey want to say?

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  No, that's it. That's the end.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  That was it? No, I said the same thing as you.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  We're ending the Vergecast. Oh my god, we're so bad at this. Goodbye, everybody. Paul, rock and roll. Promo code.

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

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